Andy Warhol The Textiles Dovecot Studios Edinburgh 24th January 2024 Review
Happy Butterfly Day Textile, silk dress by the Needlecraft, circa 1955 © 2022 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Licensed by DACS, London
Andy Warhol: The Textiles exhibition is at Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street from Friday 26th January – Saturday 18th May and is a rare chance to view one of the world’s best known artist’s least known works.
We are all so familiar with the artwork of Andy Warhol today as his work has been reproduced over the decades in so many books, posters, prints, postcards, and pretty much any surface that will take an image that it has become almost a ubiquitous backdrop to our modern culture. Few other 20th century artists, with the exception of Pablo Picasso or Roy Lichtenstein have achieved this level of cultural significance. As a result of this familiarity with his work, seeing the original silk screen prints of Elvis, Marilyn, Superman or originals of any of his other works is always an experience, but ultimately we have all for the most part seen the images so many times. This one is different and that is rare for any Andy Warhol exhibition.
This exhibition showcasing textile works, fabric lengths, garments, film and photography builds on over a decade of research by collectors and curators Richard Chamberlain and Geoff Rayner, and many of these works are on display in Scotland for the first time.
The works in this exhibition were created between the early 1950s and 1963 when Warhol ceased to work in textiles and moved into the pop art world that we are all now so familiar with. Many of us will also be familiar with his influence in film and music from the 1960s onwards, and in particular with pioneering avant-garde group The Velvet Underground. Designing record sleeves for projects that interested him continued to be one of Warhol’s few ventures outside of his mainstream works in the years to come with over 50 to his name – his work with the Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers in particular) being perhaps his best known.
Andy Warhol was a master publicist, and with an almost instantly recognisable style and an almost instinctive understanding of the power of his own name to promote his art and projects, here was a self-publicist who knew the power of corporate branding decades ahead of internet influencers. In a stark contrast to all of this, these works were produced anonymously for their mass market textile companies. Some of these designs may also have been produced for paper products such as gift wrap.
So much of what was to make Andy Warhol a household name in the pop art world of the 1960s is here in these textiles; that ability to take everyday images, everyday objects, and make their design work in multiple repeats and colour-ways is in these textile designs. Here ice cream cones, rulers, shoes, boots, garden plants, butterflies, and even socks are playfully used in fabric designs to create wonderful period dresses and tops that just look like they were so much fun to wear, something different for the buyer, almost a sense of design freedom and youth. One particular fabric design looks from a distance like it is very much a pop art design of different coloured dots/small circles, evoking the work of another great pop-art artist Bridget Riley, but get closer and those dots/circles are actually buttons.
This is a well curated exhibition and often the chance to see the displayed fabric made up also into a dress or top also turns this into a lovely little insight into the cut and look of mass market fashion from this period.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
We are all so familiar with the artwork of Andy Warhol today as his work has been reproduced over the decades in so many books, posters, prints, postcards, and pretty much any surface that will take an image that it has become almost a ubiquitous backdrop to our modern culture. Few other 20th century artists, with the exception of Pablo Picasso or Roy Lichtenstein have achieved this level of cultural significance. As a result of this familiarity with his work, seeing the original silk screen prints of Elvis, Marilyn, Superman or originals of any of his other works is always an experience, but ultimately we have all for the most part seen the images so many times. This one is different and that is rare for any Andy Warhol exhibition.
This exhibition showcasing textile works, fabric lengths, garments, film and photography builds on over a decade of research by collectors and curators Richard Chamberlain and Geoff Rayner, and many of these works are on display in Scotland for the first time.
The works in this exhibition were created between the early 1950s and 1963 when Warhol ceased to work in textiles and moved into the pop art world that we are all now so familiar with. Many of us will also be familiar with his influence in film and music from the 1960s onwards, and in particular with pioneering avant-garde group The Velvet Underground. Designing record sleeves for projects that interested him continued to be one of Warhol’s few ventures outside of his mainstream works in the years to come with over 50 to his name – his work with the Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers in particular) being perhaps his best known.
Andy Warhol was a master publicist, and with an almost instantly recognisable style and an almost instinctive understanding of the power of his own name to promote his art and projects, here was a self-publicist who knew the power of corporate branding decades ahead of internet influencers. In a stark contrast to all of this, these works were produced anonymously for their mass market textile companies. Some of these designs may also have been produced for paper products such as gift wrap.
So much of what was to make Andy Warhol a household name in the pop art world of the 1960s is here in these textiles; that ability to take everyday images, everyday objects, and make their design work in multiple repeats and colour-ways is in these textile designs. Here ice cream cones, rulers, shoes, boots, garden plants, butterflies, and even socks are playfully used in fabric designs to create wonderful period dresses and tops that just look like they were so much fun to wear, something different for the buyer, almost a sense of design freedom and youth. One particular fabric design looks from a distance like it is very much a pop art design of different coloured dots/small circles, evoking the work of another great pop-art artist Bridget Riley, but get closer and those dots/circles are actually buttons.
This is a well curated exhibition and often the chance to see the displayed fabric made up also into a dress or top also turns this into a lovely little insight into the cut and look of mass market fashion from this period.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com